In the year 1869, just before leaving Venice I had been
carefully looking at a picture by Victor Carpaccio, representing the
dream of a young princess.

Carpaccio has taken much pain to explain to
us, as far as he can, the kind of life she leads, by completely painting
her little bedroom in the light of dawn, so that you can see everything
in it. It is lighted by two doubly-arched windows, the arches being
painted crimson round their edges, and the capitals of the shafts that
bear them, gilded. They are filled at the top with small round panes of
glass; but beneath, are open to the blue morning sky, with a low lattice
across them; and in the one at the back of the room are set two
beautiful white Greek vases with a plant in each; one having rich dark
and pointed green leaves, the other crimson flowers, but not of any
species known to me, each at the end of a branch like a spray of heath.

These flower-pots stand on a shelf which runs all round the room, and
beneath the window, at about the height of the elbow, and serves to put
things on anywhere: beneath it, down to the floor, the walls are
covered with green cloth; but above are bare and white. The second
window is nearly opposite the bed, and in front of it is the princess’s
reading-table, some two feet and a half square, covered by a red cloth
with a white border and dainty fringe; and beside it her seat, not at
all like a reading chair in Oxford, but a very small three-legged stool
like a music stool, covered with crimson cloth. On the table are a book,
set up at a slope fittest for reading, and an hour-glass. Under the
shelf near the table so as to be easily reached by the outstretched arm,
is a press full of books. The door of this has been left open, and the
books, I am grieved to say, are rather in disorder, having been pulled
about before the princess went to bed, and one left standing on its
side.

Opposite this window, on the white wall, is a small shrine or picture
(I can’t see which, for it is in sharp retiring perspective), with a
lamp before it, and a silver vessel hung from the lamp, looking like one
for holding incense.

The bed is a broad four-poster, the posts being beautifully wrought
golden or gilded rods, variously wreathed and branched, carrying a
canopy of warm red. The princess’s shield is at the head of it, and the
feet are raised entirely above the floor of the room, on a dais which
projects at the lower end so as to form a seat, on which the child has
laid her crown. Her little blue slippers lie at the side of the bed, —her
white dog beside them, the coverlid is scarlet, the white sheet folded
half way back over it; the young girl lies straight, bending neither at
waist nor knee, the sheet rising and falling over her in a narrow
unbroken wave, like the shape of the coverlid of the last sleep, when
the turf scarcely rises. She is some seventeen or eighteen years old,
her head is turned towards us on the pillow, the cheek resting on her
hand, as if she were thinking, yet utterly calm in sleep, and almost
colourless. Her hair is tied with a narrow riband, and divided into two
wreaths, which encircle her head like a double crown. The white
nightgown hides the arm raised on the pillow, down to the wrist.

At the door of the room an angel enters(the little dog, though
lying awake, vigilant, takes no notice). He is a very small angel, his
head just rises a little above the shelf round the room, and would only
reach as high as the princess’s chin, if she were standing up. He has
soft grey wings, lustreless; and his dress, of subdued blue, has violet
sleeves, open above the elbow, and showing white sleeves below. He comes
in without haste, his body, like a mortal one, casting shadow from the
light through the door behind, his face perfectly quiet; a palm-branch
in his right hand — a scroll in his left.

So dreams the princess, with blessed eyes, that need no earthly dawn.
It is very pretty of Carpaccio to make her dream out the angel’s dress
so particularly, and notice the slashed sleeves; and to dream so little
an angel — very nearly a doll angel, — bringing her the branch of palm, and
message. But the lovely characteristic of all is the evident delight of
her continual life. Royal power over herself, and happiness in her
flowers, her books, her sleeping and waking, her prayers, her dreams,
her earth, her heaven….

“How do I know the princess is industrious?”

Partly by the trim state of her room, — by the hour-glass on the
table, — by the evident use of all the books she has (well bound, every
one of them, in stoutest leather or velvet, and with no dog’s-ears),
more distinctly from another picture of her, not asleep. In that one a
prince of England has sent to ask her in marriage: and her father,
little liking to part with her, sends for her to his room to ask her
what she would do. He sits, moody and sorrowful; she, standing before
him in a plain house-wifely dress, talks quietly, going on with her
needlework all the time.

A work-woman, friends, she, no less than a princess; and princess
most in being so. In like manner, is a picture by a Florentine, whose
mind I would fain have you know somewhat, as well as Carpaccio’s — Sandro
Botticelli — the girl who is to be the wife of Moses, when he first sees
her at the desert well, has fruit in her left hand, but a distaff in her
right.

“To do good work, whether you live or die,” it is the entrance to all
Princedoms; and if not done, the day will come, and that infallibly,
when you must labour for evil instead of good.John Ruskin: On Carpaccio's Dream of Saint Ursula, from
Fors Clavigera (Sunnyside, Orpington, Kent, 1872)

6 comments:

Little is known of the life of the Venetian painter Vittore Carpaccio. The most ambitious of his works are two great cycles of paintings, the Scenes from the Life of St Ursula (of which the most original is the top picture here, The Dream of St Ursula), and a subsequent cycle, Scenes from the Lives of St George and St Jerome (which includes the painting of St Augustin in his study, seen here). After these two major commissioned series, Carpaccio's fortunes went into decline, the anecdotal and "orientalizing" aspects of his work coming to be regarded as out-of-date. Today however his work is acknowledged, along with that of Gentile Bellini (who was probably a strong influence) as the two great Venetian masters. The beginning of this restoration of Carpaccio's critical reputation came with the enthusiastic assessment of the influential English critic John Ruskin (1819-1900).

The Ruskin essay on Carpaccio's masterpiece is one of a series of pamphlets addressed to "the workmen and labourers of Great Britain", composed between 1871 and 1884, and dedicated to affecting social and moral change -- a part of Ruskin's larger engagement with the betterment of the lives and conditions of the working classes.

The full set of 96 pamphlets in the Fors Clavigera series, originally published singly, were issued in an eight volume "popular edition" in 1886.

To a correspondent who had enquired about the pamphlet on the Carpaccio painting, Ruskin wrote:

"High up, in an out-of-the-way corner of the Academy in Venice, seen by no man -- nor woman neither -- of all the pictures in Europe the one I should choose for a gift, if a fairy gave me choice -- Victor Carpaccio's 'Vision of St. Ursula'"...

That Ruskin to Williams line is a beautiful tracery of human care. I had thought the thread had been lost in the weeds until it turned up again, glimmering there in the dark, under a seat on the wooden bus.

This has not been an easy winter here, but a week of nights spent with Carpaccio and Ruskin came as sweet relief. It seems the best things open up to us most clearly when we most need them, perhaps perhaps.

The more I looked at this painting the more interesting it became, so much so that it inspired me to name my latest novel after it, The Dream of Saint Ursula, published by Black Rose Writers. The story is set in the Virgin Islands which Columbus named for Saint Ursula and her virgins. I would love to know if Columbus ever met Carpoccio. In any case, put the two together and its clear that the story of Saint Ursula must have been popular and powerful in that time period.